Don’t Just Track Activity – Drive Productivity & Profitability

We’ve all heard this disclaimer from time to time, but what does it really mean? Everything? Or nothing? Many companies use call tracking and recording services to measure advertising response, capture caller information and monitor sales performance. While tracking technology provides useful business intelligence, in most enterprises call tracking data is rarely analyzed and severely underutilized. Are you really using those recordings and accompanying meta-data for quality purposes?

Your corporate image is often being established or compromised over the phone

Most of us are competing for “the business” through our phone skills

We are rarely recognizing the value of the phone until our competitors do

Corporations simply do not receive return on their tracking investment because they don’t consistently review their call reports and recordings, or don’t fully leverage the information they’re paying to collect. If carefully interpreted, this intelligence will reveal ways for businesses to adjust their sales and marketing processes so they can attract more customers, set more appointments, and sell more products and/or services.

In many industries, the 30-60-90-120 days of preceding internet research ends with 6 or 7 phone calls to companies to determine who they will visit and from whom they will eventually buy. Rather than be ruled out by the caller, there are distinct things to say (and not say) that will increase your ability to not only be ruled in, but increase the odds of the caller becoming a buyer. Call recording has become very affordable and the benefits gained will not only pay for the tracking and recording, but could even afford hiring outside sources to manage the data for you.

If you are currently tracking and recording your calls, do you review your call data? More specifically, what changes have you made to your staffing, training, operations, processes & marketing – based on the call information you’ve collected over the past months or years?

How frequently do you analyze your call reports and validate the ROI of your advertising campaigns? How many advertising dollars have you saved or redirected to more effective sources? How much has your call traffic increased as a result of adjusting your media buys?

How consistently do you listen to your recorded calls? Do you review the calls with your sales consultants to reinforce coaching and training? If so, are your sales professionals now more successful at setting appointments and converting callers to buyers? Are they currently following a specific phone process or do you need to build one?

Do you analyze your call volume and activity reports and adjust your staffing to reduce busy or unanswered calls? Have you considered using a professionally managed call center to handle overflow, after-hours or primary call traffic?

Does your sales staff promptly return missed calls? Do you review recordings for mishandled leads for “save a deal” opportunities? How much additional revenue does this generate for your company or department every month?

These opportunities may seem obvious, but most organizations just don’t have the time or staff to review and interpret call data, listen to inbound calls and continually train and retrain salespeople. If your company could use some support, consider partnering with a consulting organization that offers experienced advisors and trainers to do the work for you.

The secret to success lies in turning the wealth of call data you collect every day into actionable intelligence that will bring in more customers and generate more sales every month. We have seen these simple steps yield hundreds of thousands of dollars of net income per month.